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Class News 2000’s

June 13, 2005

2000

Aaron Blackwell ‘00 is living in Eugene with his fiance, Lisa Baum ‘03, and is working on a master’s degree in biological anthropology at the University of Oregon. His degree focus is on evolutionary psychology and human behavioral psychology.

John Cramer M.A.T ‘00 is living with his wife, Jessica Haines, in Baltimore, Maryland.

Sarah Griffith ‘00 extends greetings to all in the class of 2000. She is living in Boston and working in publishing while contemplating future endeavors that may include pursuing a Ph.D. or jobs on the West Coast. She especially hopes to hear from Craig Aaker ‘01, Sara Caylor ‘00,and Ursula Miniszewski ‘00.

Roman Hernandes J.D. ‘00 of Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt received the Emerging Leadership award at the Judge Learned Hand Awards Luncheon hosted by the American Jewish Committee, Oregon Chapter. Orlando Medina J.D. ‘00 has joined Landye Bennett Blumstein as a partner. He focuses on federal, state, and international tax planning; mergers, acquisitions, and dispositions for corporations and partnerships; equity compensation; business formations; venture capital financing; and estate planning.

Justin Rae ‘00 and his wife, Sarah Laufer ‘01, are looking forward to completing their studies this summer at Seattle University. Justin is finishing his M.B.A., and Sarah is finishing her law degree. With degrees in hand, they plan to move to Bend and build a house in the mountains. Their daughter, Chloe, was born in March.

Nikki Reynolds ‘00 is pursuing a law degree from the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law. She is working this summer at the ACLU’s reproductive freedom project in New York City.

Andrew Rice ‘00 invites anyone visiting Philadelphia to let him know. He recently moved there to accept a job running the weather department for the local CBS News affiliate. He lives in the Old City Philadelphia neighborhood.

Jennifer Rygalski ‘00 teaches at Mott Hall II Middle School in Manhattan, and has been designated a MetLife fellow in the Teachers Network Leadership Institute, an initiative to ensure teachers have a voice in national conversations about reforming education. MetLife fellows meet regularly with educational policy makers and conduct research studies in their classrooms that explore the effect of policies on student achievement.

Quinn Slobodian ‘00, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in modern European history at New York University, says he feels well prepared for the rigor the program demands because of his studies at Lewis & Clark.

Ted Sumner J.D. ‘00 has accepted a position at the Portland law firm Abbott &Prance as an associate.

2001

Tonya Alexander J.D. ‘01 has opened her own family law firm in Portland.

Jennifer Bridges J.D. ‘01 has become a shareholder in the Ashland law firm of Davis, Hearn, Saladoff & Smith. She practices in the areas of business law, copyright and trademark, and condominiums and planned communities.

Alysia Hayas ‘01, M.A.T. ‘03 was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar in Mexico last year and is now teaching fourth grade at Menlo Park Elementary School in Portland’s David Douglas School District. I have a class with 10 different native-language speakers, and I learn as much from them as I am able to teach, she writes. It’s a wonderful, extremely demanding job. She anticipates returning to graduate school to earn her ESOL/Bilingual Education Endorsement and Continuing License.

Edward Hong J.D. ‘01 joined the office of general counsel for the FBI in November 2004. Formerly, he was a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice through the Attorney General’s Honors Program in Washington, D.C.

Leigh Johnson ‘01 is a graduate assistant at Western Kentucky University’s Center for Gifted Studies while she pursues her masters degree in English from WKU.

Sarah Laufer ‘01 is finishing her law degree at Seattle University and her husband, Justin Rae ‘00, is completing his M.B.A. there. Their daughter, Chloe, was born in March. They plan to build a house in the mountains near Bend.

Benjamin McClelland ‘01 is working as a lead information technology auditor for the office of the Oregon Secretary of State. He and his wife, Melissa Kirksey McClelland, recently purchased their first home, in Sherwood.

Thomas Miller J.D. ‘01 has been named chief of staff to Portland city commissioner Sam Adams. Miller has also worked in the Peace Corps, at the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission, and as Adams’ campaign manager in the general election.

Julia Swanson-Birchill ‘01 graduated from Oregon Health & Science UniversityÕs School of Medicine in June 2005. She will continue at OHSU for residency in general surgery, intending to pursue cardiac surgery.

Tonia Givan Tamburini ‘01 earned her master’s degree in education from the University of Colorado in 2003 and is now teaching seventh-grade life science in Littleton, Colorado.

Alejandro Tosi LL.M. ‘01, J.D. ‘03 has joined the Portland law office of Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt as an associate. Tosi focuses on environmental law.

2002

Bill Allen ‘02 is still working at American General Financial Services. He and Katie Burke Allen got married last summer and are enjoying their new house in Portland. They look forward to hearing from Lewis & Clark friends.

Elizabeth Bellardo ‘02 earned her master’s degree in May 2004 from the Elliot School of International Studies at George Washington University. She is now the program associate for the Humanitarian Policy and Practice Committee at Inter-Action, an alliance of U.S.-based international development and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations in Washington, D.C. Its Humanitarian Policy and Practice Committee coordinates all of the agency’s work in refugee and disaster assistance.

Joe Bielecki ‘02 joined Teach for America in summer 2003 and currently teaches middle school math and science in San Jose, California. He plans to pursue graduate studies in educational leadership and develop programs that bring experiential and environmental education to low-income communities.

Sarah Carpenter J.D. ‘02, previously stationed in Guam with the U.S. Air Force, has relocated to Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia.

Nancy Ferguson M.Ed. ‘02, who works at Templeton Elementary School in Oregon’s Tigard-Tualatin School District, was one of two recipients of the Oregon School Counselor Association’s Elementary School Counselors of the Year Award for 2004-05.

Rebecca Harviston ‘02 recently moved back to Portland and is an AmeriCorps*VISTA member working at the Oregon Food Bank. She will begin work this fall toward a master’s degree in public administration at Portland State University.

Shari Lane J.D. ‘02 has joined the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries as the operations manager of the Civil Rights Division.

2003

Lisa Baum ‘03 is engaged to Aaron Blackwell ‘00 and is living in Eugene, where Blackwell is pursuing a master’s degree in biological anthropology at the University of Oregon.

Audrey DeCoursey ‘03 will enter the master of divinity program at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, this fall, continuing her path toward ordained ministry in the Church of the Brethren- “a cool church,” she says, noting that Jamee Eriksen ‘03 is also a member. DeCoursey and her six cats are looking forward to moving to the Bay Area. Do come and visit!

Lukas Hein ‘03 married April LaPotre ‘04 in May 2004. They live in northern California, where she works as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer for the Youth Service Bureau, and he enjoys working as a jazz musician.

Royce Lindsay Jr. ‘03 is pursuing his master’s degree in environmental/chemical engineering at San Jose State University and is also working as a safety engineer for Toyota.

Chris Murray ‘03 teaches elementary school English in Japan and lives in the town of Wadayama, Hyogo Prefecture, about an hour north of Kobe. He is having a great time and will probably stay for a couple of years.

Vicky Pettersen ‘03 completed her master’s degree in theatre at the University of Wisconsin this spring and starts the Ph.D. program this fall.

Chris Phan ‘03 is a graduate student and graduate teaching fellow in the math department at the University of Oregon. Last fall, he passed examinations qualifying him for the Ph.D. program.

Alexa Reynolds ‘03received her master’s degree in psychology from Harvard University this spring. In June, she moved to Melbourne and became a permanent resident of Australia.

Greg Rodriguez Jr. ‘03 is pursuing a doctorate in pharmacy at the University of the Pacific Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

Esther Van Mourik J.D. ‘03 has been hired as a staff attorney on the government team of the Office of Legislative Legal Services in Colorado.

2004

Aaron Clark ‘04 immersed himself in organizing and fundraising activities for the Democratic party after graduation. Immediately after the 2004 presidential election, exhausted and devastated, he went to his parents home in eastern Iowa to rest and reflect and read The Republic again and Democracy in America for the first time. A week after the election, he moved to Whistler, British Columbia, where he works in a wine shop and snowboards five times a week. He next plans to enroll in intensive Arabic classes at the University of Chicago, with the goal of entering graduate school by the fall of 2006 to study Middle Eastern history or international law. He also contributes to a podcasting page, a new and somewhat exciting extension of blog culture at www.thepeanutgallery.info, a Web site launched by classmate David Anderson ‘04.

Magdalena Maggie Cohen ‘04 is enrolled in the SCALE program at Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles. Southwestern’s Conceptual Approach to Legal Education (SCALE) is the only two-calendar-year alternative course of instruction offered at an American Bar Association approved law school.

Maggie Forrestal ‘04 is associate research specialist in the Skop lab of the Department of Genetics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She enjoys playing viola and singing in a local band and in the UW String Orchestra, as well as volunteering at Freewheel, a nonprofit, do-it-yourself community bike shop.

Casia Freitas ‘04 is interning at the Institute of International Education’s Office for Latin America, located in Mexico City. In that position she is writing a book on bilingual schools in Mexico and Central America and administering a global leadership conference for leaders of nongovernmental organizations focusing on economic development. She has administered an international educational advising conference for advisers in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, and has assisted Latin American students who are interested in studying in the United States.

Anisa Goforth ‘04 teaches computers to pre-K through sixth-grade students at Northbridge International School Cambodia (NISC) in Phnom Penh. She also teaches an introductory high school elective class at NISC, an international school with an American-based curriculum geared toward English, American, Australian, Korean, and Japanese expatriates as well as local Khmei students. She plans to be there one more year and says, “After the drizzle of Portland, I am now so glad to be in the midst of the tropics!”

Nik Gorman ‘04 is enrolled in the master’s in public health program at the University of Southern California and has applied to USC’s Ph.D. program in health behavior research. He has also begun a research assistantship with USC’s Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center that involves evaluating tobacco use in China. An eyetracking research paper that he worked on with Erik Nilsen, associate professor of psychology at Lewis & Clark, was recently accepted for publication.

April LaPotre Hein ‘04 married Lukas Hein ‘03 in May 2004. They moved to northern California, where she works as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer for the Youth Service Bureau, an organization serving runaway and homeless youth in Humboldt County, and he enjoys working as a jazz musician. She says, “We are happy here and we just might stay a while!”

James Hilsenteger J.D. ‘04 has joined Marger Johnson & McCollom as an associate, focusing on intellectual property law. Prior to joining the firm, he worked for 12 years as a mechanical engineer for local freight railcar manufacturer Gunderson, where he most recently served as senior design engineer.

Sarah Holzer ‘04 is working as a nanny and living in Portland with her boyfriend, Noah Hummel, who graduated from South Dakota State University in 2003. She’s attending the Oregon School of Massage to become a licensed massage therapist, and hopes to work in a hospital providing massage therapy to cancer patients.

Andelina “Nina” Jozanovic ‘04 is a first-year medical student at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in New York and says, “I am very happy that I am able to study medicine here.” Noting that she felt educationally disadvantaged when she came to Portland in 1999 as a Bosnian refugee after living for three years in a refugee camp in Germany, she says that Lewis Clark prepared her well for medical school and the “real world,” and also made her aware of and sensitive to issues of diversity.

Joe La Fountaine, who earned his Basic Administrator License from the graduate school in 2004, is now principal at Waldo Middle School in Salem, after spending more than 20 years at Winston Middle School in southern Oregon. For information on La Fountaine’s recent book, see “Bookshelf” on page 34.

Alan Lave J.D. ‘04 recently opened his own practice in Portland.

Casandra “Cassi” Lydon ‘04 anticipates completing the paramedic education program conducted by Oregon Health & Science University and Oregon Institute of Technology in August 2005. She’s not sure where she’ll end up after that but says she would love to keep in touch with people.

Shannon McGonagle ‘04 is a research technician in a biology lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She plans to work there until the summer of 2006, and then pursue a Ph.D. in cell/molecular or developmental biology at MIT or Harvard, although she is also considering schools outside her native New England.

Andy Meade ‘04 is teaching eighth-grade social studies at M.S. 118, a middle school in the Bronx, New York, as part of Teach for America. Thu Ngo ‘04 expects to receive her master’s degree in English from the University of California at Irvine in the spring of 2006. She is currently applying to teacher credential programs.

Betsy Rice ‘04 teaches English to middle school students at several schools in Okayama City, Japan.

Ninon Lewis ‘04 works as a project coordinator and marketing representative for Academic Network, a health communications and consulting company in downtown Portland; tutors high school students in English and history; and assists college students with research project planning. She stays in touch with all her professors in the communication department at Lewis & Clark, saying, “They are always there to offer great advice in my career as well as in life.”

Kim Sackman ‘04 is attending law school at Northern Illinois University, helping out in the law school admissions office, and teaching dance at a local studio. “Basically,” she says, “I do a lot of studying.”

Karen Smith ‘04 is doing social work for Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare “and enjoying not being in school for what feels like the first time in a very long time.” That may soon change as she is working on taking prerequisites for a graduate program in occupational therapy.

Abigail St. Lawrence J.D. ‘04 has joined the Helena, Montana, office of Doney, Crowley, Bloomquist & Uda as an associate.

Rintaro Takahashi ‘04 is part of the engine components group of the sales and marketing department for Aisin Seiki Company, the second-largest supplier of automotive parts and systems in Japan.

Melissa Topacio Long ‘04 returned to Seattle in May to work as deputy campaign manager for Ron Sims, Democratic incumbent running for reelection as King County executive. Previously, she was a high school teaching assistant at Lycee du Genie Civil Leonard de Vinci in Antibes, France.

Susan Whitmore ‘04 works as a research associate with Battelle Memorial Institute and is continuing the research she started with her senior year economics thesis. The research, begun with the help of grant funding and Professor of Economics Eban Goodstein, involves estimating the nonmarket costs of climate change on the Oregon coast. She and her husband, Najam Haq, live in Portland and celebrated their seventh anniversary this year.

Lisa Williams ‘04 is in the Ph.D. program at the department of psychology at Northeastern University. She is conducting research to establish a reliable way to manipulate the emotion of pride as a means of describing its social, behavioral, and motivational outcomes.

Bear Wilner-Nugent J.D. ‘04 is a staff attorney in the Multnomah County section of the Metropolitan Public Defender.

David Woessner ‘04 works at the Oregon Hearing Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University, studying hair cell development in the inner ear.